Practicality of Spin Chain Wiring in Diamond Quantum Technologies

Coupled spin chains are promising candidates for wiring up qubits in solid-state quantum computing (QC). In particular, two nitrogen-vacancy centers in diamond can be connected by a chain of implanted nitrogen impurities; when driven by suitable global fields the chain can potentially enable quantum state transfer at room temperature. However, our detailed analysis of error effects suggests that foreseeable systems may fall far short of the fidelities required for QC. Fortunately the chain can function in the more modest role as a mediator of noisy entanglement, enabling QC provided that we use subsequent purification. For instance, a chain of 5 spins with interspin distances of 10 nm has finite entangling power as long as the T-2 time of the spins exceeds 0.55 ms. Moreover we show that repurposing the chain this way can remove the restriction to nearest-neighbor interactions, so eliminating the need for complicated dynamical decoupling sequences. DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.110.100503